1966 Triumph Spitfire

Thanks, Elwood. I got 3 coats on it. I'll check it out tomorrow to see how it ends up.

This is without clear. Don't mind the terrible spot at the top...that was some cratering from my reduced epoxy that I didn't re-do on purpose. You may be able to see the dry spot in the center, though. Whoops :oops:

But, that's why I'm practicing!

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Chris
 
The epoxy I reduced by about 25% (based on weight). That was the first time I sprayed reduced epoxy, so while I turned my feed back a bit, I slowed down my application, which I should not have.
 
Is there a pot life with activated base? I've read around the forum and it seems that there really isn't anything certain. Some have even mixed the stuff and used it a while later, but I hesitate to put a time to "a while" because I couldn't find anything solid.
The stuff that I used on my practice panel was not activated since I was using so little, but when I do this for real, I'm going to activate it. Given the 30-minute wait between coats, I'm not sure if the stuff will kick on me in the gun. For epoxy, in between coats I pour the stuff back into the cup and wash the gun through with thinner (I don't take it all apart until I'm all done, though). Do I need to do this with activated base coat?
And, while I'm at it, what about activated clear pot life?

Thanks everyone!
 
The base i was referring to for viscosity. Looks too thick.
Wait for the other guys to advise. You've done real good so far, will be neet ride.
 
With the activated base, it does have a pot life, but nothing you have to worry about if you're spraying all in one day. If you wait 30 min. between coats, it sure wouldn't hurt to clean your gun between coats. With the clear, only mix enough to do one coat at a time. Mix what you estimate you will need for one coat, spray it, then see what you have left. Then the following coats mix only what you used the first coat. If you have some left from the first coat, it will be fine to use the second coat with 30 min. flash time.
 
Thanks, guys. Eddie, I mixed the base 1:1 with reducer as the tech manual said. I didn't consider reducing it further.
I did spray clear last night and it came out ok. Lots of orange peel and lots of trash (I wasn't too worried about being clean like I will when I paint the car).
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I was stupid and only put on two coats, though. Not sure why I did that. I need to get two more on so I can cut and buff like I will on the car. I'm going to do that today, so hopefully that doesn't mess it up. I'll tack it off and spray it.

I didn't get any runs on the panel, but when I was spray testing the gun, I had the fluid all the way down to only one turn open and, even then, I got a small run on the paper. Is this normal? I was afraid that if I turned it down so far as to not get a run on the paper, I'd have almost nothing coming out and would fight with dry spray. But, am I putting down enough to get the mil thickness right?

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You can tell that I made my tests from left to right based on the run length.
 
I'm going to paint the car in pieces and I'm developing my paint plan to account for time constraints (I'm mostly a weekend warrior) and logistics (my "paint booth" isn't that big"). I intend to get everything is a reduced coat of epoxy prior to base and I will make sure I fall within the recommended time frames from that point through clear coat. But, since I will be doing this in just a few panels at a time, upwards of a week will pass between panel groups.
Everything is top-coated with 2K except for those minor areas where I've had some burn through of metal during blocking. I intend to get that covered in a single coat of full-strength epoxy (per tech manual). If I do that, but then let that panel sit for a while - I'm sure some will fall outside the 7-day window, maybe significantly, as I make my way through the whole process - am I okay to just hit it with 220-grit and a red scuff pad prior to the reduced epoxy coat? I know the tech manual says to scuff and then shoot it again with full-strength epoxy before moving on, but I understand that more to be for 2K (or even base) as your next paint.
Everything is starting to get jumbled up in my head and I just want to make sure I give myself the best chance for success.

Thanks,
Chris
 
What psi at gun with trigger pulled & fan wide enough are you experimenting with?
25 is nice place to start. Better to dial it in & find happy speed pace on that test panel.
Your base after flash should look like nice matte finish, no peel.
Don't rush it. You did lots of work, this is fun part.
 
I'm going to paint the car in pieces and I'm developing my paint plan to account for time constraints (I'm mostly a weekend warrior) and logistics (my "paint booth" isn't that big"). I intend to get everything is a reduced coat of epoxy prior to base and I will make sure I fall within the recommended time frames from that point through clear coat. But, since I will be doing this in just a few panels at a time, upwards of a week will pass between panel groups.
Everything is top-coated with 2K except for those minor areas where I've had some burn through of metal during blocking. I intend to get that covered in a single coat of full-strength epoxy (per tech manual). If I do that, but then let that panel sit for a while - I'm sure some will fall outside the 7-day window, maybe significantly, as I make my way through the whole process - am I okay to just hit it with 220-grit and a red scuff pad prior to the reduced epoxy coat? I know the tech manual says to scuff and then shoot it again with full-strength epoxy before moving on, but I understand that more to be for 2K (or even base) as your next paint.
Everything is starting to get jumbled up in my head and I just want to make sure I give myself the best chance for success.

Thanks,
Chris
I think a good plan would be to get the panels, put 1 coat epoxy over the bare metal spots, wait 30 minutes, then 1 full coat over the entire panel. This will give you less chance of hitting metal again before sealer, and give you one final look at the panel in shiny epoxy before final sanding. You really shouldn't need to sand with 220 before sealer, 320-400 would be fine, just enough to get the texture out.
 
What psi at gun with trigger pulled & fan wide enough are you experimenting with?
25 is nice place to start. Better to dial it in & find happy speed pace on that test panel.
Your base after flash should look like nice matte finish, no peel.
Don't rush it. You did lots of work, this is fun part.
I've always been painting the epoxy at about 26psi (granted, with the regulator backwards until recently) and that's where I did the base coat, too. I stripped a portion of the test panel back down to bare metal last night, so I'll be going through the steps again (going to skip build primer this time, though). The base did look like that the last time I laid it down, very flat, so hopefully it'll be just the same application this time.
Thanks!
 
I think a good plan would be to get the panels, put 1 coat epoxy over the bare metal spots, wait 30 minutes, then 1 full coat over the entire panel. This will give you less chance of hitting metal again before sealer, and give you one final look at the panel in shiny epoxy before final sanding. You really shouldn't need to sand with 220 before sealer, 320-400 would be fine, just enough to get the texture out.
Thank you. Good call on the partial two coats. Never thought of that (why I come here!). Got it on the sanding, too. Thanks!
 
Pending any unforeseen circumstances, I'll be ready to shoot color this weekend on the body. I'm doing my sealer coat (25% reduced white epoxy) tonight (Thursday). Based on Barry's testing (http://www.spiuserforum.com/index.p...reads/primer-basecoat-wo-dow.6540/#post-69786), you can wait up to 48 hours between epoxy and SPI base (no sun) so on Saturday I'll put down 3 coats of SPI medium red base (waiting about 45 minutes between coats) and then come back Sunday for 4 coats of clear (30 minutes between coats).

I've probably read the tech manual about 3 dozen times to drill the process into my head and I will review it, and mixing instructions, for each step. I'm shooting the entire body at once and it'll be the largest amount of paint that I've laid down at once, so the epoxy will be good practice.

With the 45-minute wait period between coats of base, should I be confident that incidental contact with it won't leave a mark? I intend to develop a shooting plan and do some dry-runs to minimize my chances of touching anything that's wet, but when I come around for my second coat, should the base be dry enough (should be about 72F in garage (no booth), 60% humidity) that I'll be safe? I don't plan on dragging the hose across it, of course, but with reaching under the dash and doing some the of the interior, I have a feeling that I'll probably touch the rocker panels or something. Will the clear be similar?

Another question I have is that I may not be able to get the car out into the sun for a while. Would this be detrimental? If it's highly recommended, I'll do it, but it'll take moving around a lot of stuff in the garage as my Spitfire is in the back. My intention was to get it in the sun once all of the panels were painted and everything put back together (panel-wise, not interior or such), but will probably be several weeks. If there are no detrimental affects of waiting, I'd rather wait until I can roll it out with everything bolted on so I only have to do it once. I wouldn't cut and buff until after it's been in the sun, unless that doesn't matter.

I'd like to thank everyone for helping me to get to this point. I'll definitely post pictures, hopefully without a lot of "now what do I do?!" captions. I'm very excited that, after owning this car for 5 years (almost to the day) and restoring it for 4, she's finally going to get into paint.

Thanks,
Chris
 
As for touching the fresh base or clear, about all you can do is be as careful as you can. When you do drag your hose on it try to do it where you'll be putting trim back on. :D It's gonna look great, I can't wait to see pics. You may learn some new curse words too...
 
The clear is down. 4 coats of medium red, 4 coats of universal. Like another guy on here said to me (he's doing the 70 MGB), if that clear is that easy to spray for us rookies, the pros must absolutely love it! I swear to you there was a point that I stuttered and got too close and I said to myself "there's your first run" and I also swear that it looked like the paint started to pucker up...and then it just flowed out. It was pure magic. Thank you Barry and SPI for making this newbie feel like I know what I'm doing.
Now, I do have a lot of trash, so I hope that it will cut and buff out. But I tell you, if I didn't have that, I wouldn't touch it. Almost no orange peel. Beginner's luck!
I'm going to try to get it out in the sun this weekend after I land it on the chassis and give it a more thorough look, so I may change my tune under natural, instead of fluorescent and LED lights. I'm going to paint the rest of my panels before I cut and buff anything (weeks), but I'm sure I'll be having a lot of questions about that when the time comes.

Thanks,
Chris
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Side view (obviously). And, yes, I did not paint the interior on purpose. I may regret that, but it's going to be covered in carpet anyway and has two coats of full-strength epoxy. I did get up in the footwells and on the door thresholds just in case the carpet didn't cover fully in those areas.

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A dry spot going on in here, but hard to see. You can see it in the left side of the "dashed" light line in the middle. But, I can see that drill press, too!!

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An larger example of the trash that I'm going to have to deal with. This is common, unfortunately.
 
Hi everyone. A bit of an update and a bit of a problem. Sorry for the long post.

So, after painting the body in late August, I decided to land the tub on the chassis and get the car all put together for a test drive. I have literally removed just about every bolt that could be removed from this car, rebuilding the motor and gearbox (not the diff, that scared me), and I wanted to make sure that it was mechanically sound so that if I found problems, I could fix them over the winter. The test drive went well and the car, mechanically and electrically, is solid. Needs a tuning, but solid.


Last weekend I moved back to painting, starting with the doors. I used the same process as doing the body. I'm in a climate-controlled space and temp was right at the limit of 65F and it was maintained there (or a bit warmer) throughout this process. I checked metal and paint temp each time before spraying.

The doors were last sprayed with unreduced epoxy primer a while ago so I wet sanded everything through 400-grit, hit the few burn-through spots with full-strength epoxy, waited 30 minutes, then hit everything with reduced (25%) epoxy primer.

About 36 hours later (based on Barry's post from some time ago that you can wait up to 48 hours between reduced epoxy and base), I came back and wet sanded again with 800-grit, cleaned it up with waterborne W&G, waited 30 minutes for it to dry, tacked and shot 3 coats of medium red, mixed 1:1 with medium reducer and a bit of clear activator, waiting at least 30 minutes between coats. Following the third coat I did a visual inspection and everything looked good.

I came back the next day, wiped the doors down with solvent based W&G, waited at least 30 minutes, tacked and shot 4 coats of clear, mixed 1:1 with slow activator, waiting 30 minutes between coats. I did another quick visual and everything appear fine. That was Sunday.

I came back yesterday and the results were not good. It's really hard for me to capture a good pic, but I've included what I got. The texture is not the same all over (some spots are actually really good), but it's almost like a golf ball in places. My guess is that I simply put the clear on too heavy and the solvents struggled to escape. As the clear dried and shrank, the solvent finally released, leaving a pocket for the clear to sink into. Honestly, though, I really have no idea, I do know I don't want it to happen again.

I am prepared to respray the door but, before I do, I'm going to take advantage of my mistake and get some practicing cutting and buffing. Who knows, maybe I'll get lucky and be able to get the texture out. Sorry for the long post and I appreciate any help (or confirmation) anyone can provide.

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Cheers,
Chris
 
I wonder if the W/G remover had not completely dried in spots due to the cool shop. Is it possible your tack rag could have gotten contaminated? Hopefully someone will have a more definitive answer for you.

I also wonder if this could be solvent pop. It seems odd to me it looked good to you and then this showed up later. Normally fish eyes show pretty quickly while shooting the paint.

John
 
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